Apple CEO Tim Cook, Facebook’s Mark Zuckerberg, Amazon’s Jeff Bezos, A and Alphabet/Google’s Sundar Pichai are scheduled to testify at a U.S. House Judiciary Committee hearing as part of its antitrust investigation.
The appearance of the tech giant’s leaders was first reported by The New York Times… Per the Times, the House committee’s yearlong probe has included “eight round-table discussions, 93 requests for information, 43 experts testifying and five hearings.”
“It’s the first major look at antitrust in this industry in 50 years and a lot of people worldwide are watching how lawmakers deal with tech,” Rep. David Cicilline (D – R.I.) told [the NYT]. “But throughout, we know it is impossible to properly conclude this without hearing from the decision makers themselves.”
Large technology firms are also the target of antitrust investigations by the Justice Department, the FTC and various state attorneys general.
MacDailyNews Take: Last month Cicilline called the App Store policies “highway robbery” and said the company demands a “ransom” from developers.
Cicilline is obviously prone to hysterics and has no idea what Apple and their App Store provides to developers, including a safe, secure, highly lucrative distribution method to the richest personal computer, smartphone, and tablet demographics ever assembled.
Apple built the Mac. Apple built the iPhone. Apple built the iPad. Apple built the App Store. Apple created the most verdant ecosystem ever created for developers by far. Only the losers and those developers who can’t read and follow simple rules are whining incessantly.
If anything, Apple takes too little of a cut for all that the App Store provides developers.
We look forward to Apple CEO Tim Cook (or whatever lower level executive Apple decides to send to this latest D.C. charade) schooling Cicilline & Co. publicly. — MacDailyNews, June 21, 2020
I believe that Google and FB pay off the US Congress much more enthusiastically than Apple so the two former will likely get treated with more deference.
Apple does not seem to have a dominant position; It has a dominant gatekeeper position to wealthier circles which greedy people and congress (yes they are separate entities) resent.